crm - News, Features, and Slideshows

Features

• 9 Ways to Improve Your Company's CRM System

  Customer relationship experts share their top tips for managing customer interactions and getting the most out of your CRM software.

• Big Data Drives City of Buffalo's Operation Clean Sweep

  By layering data from 311 and 911 calls over Census data, unemployment data and other poverty indicators, Buffalo uses data analytics to identify its most challenged neighborhoods and more effectively deploy resources for everything from neighborhood beautification to combatting crime and reducing fire hazards.

• Six ways social media affected the enterprise in 2012

  Social media has changed more than the way companies market and promote themselves. Social networking has also changed the way companies recruit, how they communicate internally and how they handle sensitive data.

• 10 CRM Mistakes and How You Can Avoid Making Them

  Customer relationship management experts and seasoned users discuss how to avoid the most common mistakes, so you can get the most out of your CRM software or service with the least amount of hassle.

• Is the future of CRM in the Cloud? - Part 1

  It is just on 10 years since Salesforce.com unveiled the first preview of its customisable online customer relationship management (CRM) software at the annual DEMO conference in California. DEMO had previously been the launch platform for ground-breaking technology such as Netscape Navigator, Sun’s Java and Adobe Acrobat, but attendees in February 2001 would have had little idea that they were witnessing something that would turn the world of customer management software — and enterprise software generally — on its head.

• Advice for Evaluating CRM Cloud Platforms

  A day doesn't go by without headlines about cloud computing, virtualization, and the next computing platform. No doubt these computing models are important, but when it comes to CRM - what's important about cloud computing? And how should platforms be evaluated for CRM applications?

• Why Salesforce.com Chatter Matters

  CRM systems have large and intricate databases that describe customer interaction, and most of the effort goes into recording and managing the ongoing conversation between your firm and the customer. CRM systems have information about prospects, customers, e-mail/phone conversations, sales opportunities, and post-sale support. But look inside most CRM systems, and there's very little information about collaboration among your employees: just basic profile identification information and a dozen settings. In most CRM systems, it's difficult to see the totality of a user's activities: the system's focus is on the customer and the development of a deal, not about the conversations happening between users and their attempts to leverage information across your company.

• CRM's Identity Crisis: Duplicate Contacts

  At the core of customer relationship management is "who am I talking with?" In a simple SFA or CRM system, it's obvious: you called them, or they called you. But in enterprise CRM, it's tricky to identify exactly whom the interaction is with, and every new data source seems to make it harder. The problem occurs at two levels: contact information blur from multiple databases, and avatar confusion from multiple entry points into your company's web and social networking sites. This week, we'll cover the top layer of the problem.

• When Your CRM System Passes 1 Million Records

  There isn't a sales force in the world that says it has enough Leads. And you won't find many marketing VPs who want to do fewer campaigns. So there's a never-ending stream of new leads, prospect interactions, and conversations to be stored in the CRM system. At companies in consumer markets, open source software, and other categories it's not unusual to find a million leads or more. But that's just the beginning: if you're using the latest marketing automation system, every e-mail, web download, and prospect response is recorded in the CRM system. And if you have a large call center, every call and e-mail exchange should be recorded well.

• CRM tips: The trouble with activity management

  CRM systems are almost always used for lead, contact and deal management. Sales and marketing put data into the system so that pipeline formation and deal flow can be seen and worked in a systematic way. Many companies also use CRM for customer service, which uses calls and cases as the core workflow. Once your company gets a decent proportion of the customer interactions in the system, you can easily produce reports and dashboards that allow management to see more about the business, spotting bottlenecks or other problems in your operation. Consequently, most companies use data from the CRM system to set standard performance levels for the sales, marketing, and customer service organisations, measuring them against quotas by month or quarter.

• CRM Tips: Delete the Delete Privilege

  CRM systems are designed to be user friendly, not imposing undue security in the interest of usability and fast adoption. CRM users are business people who aren't likely to put up with sound arguments about the need for data hygiene. After a few months of disappearing data and incomplete reports, they're more likely to listen...but not at the beginning.

• CRM Deployment: Users Can't Set Timetable

  With most enterprise applications, the executive champions and the user community are typically measured and have manageable expectations. Think accounting. With CRM, it isn't necessarily so.

• CRM Team Staffing - Inside or Out?

  In the good old days of CRM, the software ran on your servers and needed heavy customization to really work with the rest of your business. The staffing decisions were pretty straightforward: There might be implementation consultants, but the system needed an ongoing team of your own staff. In one of these classic on-premise implementations I came across just last year, the CRM "permanent staff" was 1 development/operational person for every 100 users.

• Touchy-Feely CRM: How to Get More Customer-Driven Data

  Almost all CRM systems are full of data that's been populated by your company's people. Sure, the notes and updates are about the customer relationship, but it's put in from your perspective and for your reasons, not the customer's. In many cases, the only information that has actually been put in the CRM system by the customer themselves is their name, e-mail address, and phone number.

• Four Dirty Little Secrets of CRM Requirements Lists

  In an ERP System, the core functionality has been well defined since the 90's. Some companies might need a different distribution module or a fancier scheduler algorithm, but MRP is pretty much MRP. An accounting system? You'd better not have a lot of creative requirements.